Dave Freer by A Mankind Witch

Author:A Mankind Witch
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-08-11T21:36:04+00:00

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Framed

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CHAPTER 28

Trollheim

Signy had felt her muscles turn to jelly and herself frozen, trapped like a fly in amber, as the Christian witch's divining wand had streaked toward her, and then it suddenly appeared to hit something and fall at her feet. It felt as if the cursed thing was drinking her! She was so exhausted she could barely stand, let alone face this!

The feasting hall blurred as she felt herself swaying. She fell, just as the bear pelts somehow became bears.

When she woke again, she was flying. Or that was what appeared to be happening. Actually she realized that a bear had her by each limb and they were carrying her facedown as they raced through the forest. Tree branches and dead brambles scratched at her. She might as well have struggled to free herself from quicksand--her limbs had no strength.

They raced through forest and meadows, swapping carriers, running on. When they came to the river, Signy thought that they'd have to slow down . . . but instead the bear-creature's leader gestured at the ice-rimmed water and began chanting in a guttural growling voice.

Ice grew as she watched. Splintery spars of it blurred the transparent water, and then hardened and firmed. Soon, amazingly soon, a creaking ice bridge appeared. The bears, claws shrieking on the new ice, scrambled across and ran on. And on.

She recognized Svartdal, and the narrow pass up to the high fells. She'd even been up there, once, with her father. In summer. Her teeth were chattering by the time the bears arrived at a small bautarstein in the high valley. They paused there. The lead bear took a pouch that was hung around his neck, sprinkled powder from it onto the stone, and growled some galdr words.

Signy watched incredulously as a huge rock slid aside and a cave mouth gaped into visibility above them. They picked her up again and went into the maw.

And down into the dark.

Occasionally she glimpsed light--ghostly marsh light--and heard shrieking and scampering. The bear-men paid it no mind. They just pressed on. Then, at length they emerged, on the side wall of a cliff-hung gorge. They bounded onto the stones of a huge bridge built of perfectly shaped interlocking stone blocks, each block the size of a bonder's cottage. The bridge shimmered as if in the heat, but it was bitterly cold here. In the glimpse she had over the edge the gorge they crossed seemed bottomless. The other side was a bleak place, full of stones and dry grasses. But they rushed on, on and on, eventually carrying her across the braided sandbanks of a river that must be a full quarter of a mile wide in spate. And to a huge bald knob of a hill. There was no sign of habitation, but they were on a definite broad footpath leading somewhere.

From behind a rock rose something that looked like a pile of rocks and scraps of animal fur. Misshapen rocks. With tufts of what could almost be hair .

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